Trans Stories

Catalog description

In this creative writing course, we'll read poetry, personal essays, and fiction that expand and complicate our understanding of trans and gender diverse experiences, asking how stories can articulate what's at stake in the fight for trans justice. We'll consider how a craft-based approach to storytelling allows us to avoid the didactic and lean into the complexity, nuance, and intimacy that good writing has to offer. In the first half of the course, we'll be engaged mostly with the stories of others - reading both canonical and contemporary trans writers. In the second half of the course, students will be supported in conceptualizing, executing, and revising an individual creative writing project - fiction, personal narrative, or hybrid form - that represents a thoughtful exploration of the question: What does gender mean to you? The final weeks of the class will focus on drafting and revision. Our inquiries will circle questions of craft and the power of narrative technique to lead us to more complex, personal, and inclusive understandings of gender, trans justice, and a gender-inclusive future. This course is open to all students, regardless of gender identity.